“I had figured you would do something to get to me. I wasn’t sure whether I would see you….”
“You expected me?”
“I know you.”
“Yes. You do.”
“You arrived with a camera crew from Global Cable News.”
“Yes.”
“Clever. I’m sure the owners and administrators of Blythe Spirit are delighted by the publicity.”
“They’ve been most cooperative. So why did you decide to invite me to your room?”
“Once I saw you … You were counting on that, weren’t you? … You’ve changed little. Are you sitting?”
Fletch realized he had the advantage. She was backlit by the fading light in the window behind her. The attendant had closed the door behind Fletch. He could see her amazing outline. She couldn’t see him at all. “No.”
“Sit down. Please.”
The arms of the chair in which Fletch sat were too far away from his body to be useful. Could he have lost that much weight since that morning? “Thank you. I seem to remember a time when you and I fell through a curtain very much like that one.”
“I remember, too. We were wet, and we were naked, and it was wonderful. That reporter came into the bathroom—what was her name?—and found us on the floor struggling to get out from under that damned shower curtain.”
“Freddie Arbuthnot, who I thought was an impostor.”
“We were laughing. I was afraid you’d use her interrupting us as an excuse to stop. You didn’t.”
“No. I didn’t. She went away.”
“You never were easily embarrassed.”
“Is Jack my son?”
“What do you think?”
Various images went through Fletch’s mind: the back of the lanky young man dressed in wet, muddy prison denims in his study, looking away from him, the quick flash of his eyes; an hour later finding him cleaned up in the study, as shiny as a new penny; his sitting in the morning sunlight on the top rail of the corral; his fiddling with the knobs of an electronic console in the dusk at Camp Orania; his crouching over the body of the man he had killed the night before; his repeating what Fletch said through the station wagon window just before Fletch left the encampment. “Yes.”
“He is.”
“People mark a certain physical resemblance.”
“Mental, too. He’s as curious as a cat. In spirit, he’s you all over again. Do you find him witty?”
“Witty? Half.”
“Do you like him?”
“Depends.”
“You love him.”
“Crystal, why didn’t you ever tell me we have a son?”
“How angry are you about that?”
“Very.”
“Why?”
“It might have been nice. You know: son and Dad; Dad and son. Birthdays. Football.”
“Having a kid is a lot more than birthdays and football, Fletch.”
“Did you think me entirely irresponsible?”
“How many times have you been married? Three?”
“Yes.”
“Did you ever have kids with any of your wives?”
“You never really knew my wives. I mean, you did know me. We weren’t grown up. I have no idea why I married Linda, Barbara.”
“You believed in the old institutions, you used to say.”
“Yeah.”
“In a time and a place when you yourself were changing the old institutions more than you knew. We all were.”
“Technology changed them more than anything we did. The bicycle. The car. Radio, television, telephone, the computer. The pill. Time and spatial relations, human relations were changing more and faster than ever before. We struggled to keep up. Most of us failed, I guess.”
“You never had kids with your wives, did you? So I should snatch a kid from you, and surprise you with it? How would you have felt about that?”
“I might have liked it.”
“You married some East European princess. I read you called her Annie Maggie. Did you love her?”
“Yes.”
“Would you have had a child by her?”
“She was pregnant when she was assassinated. I thought only we and one doctor knew about it. It may have been the reason she was assassinated.”
“Oh, God. Sorry, Fletch.”
“Life is long; life is short.”
“I did you a big favor, Fletch.”
“How’s that?”
“If you had raised a son, he would have rebelled against you, dissented, probably become the opposite of everything you are and everything you stand for. Sons do that.”
“Some sons, I guess.”
“Your son would have. I’m certain your son would have. Not knowing you, Jack adores you.”
“Sure.”
“He does. He’s enormously curious about you. He has scrapbooks of newspaper clippings about you. I had to consider putting him in therapy when Princess Annie Maggie was killed, he was that upset. He’s read your book on Pinto, Edgar Arthur Tharp, Junior, so many times, I think he’s worn out a dozen copies.”
“Really?”
“I think he’s memorized every line of it.”
Fletch recollected the faddy little argument Jack had given him about
Crystal said, “He insisted on going to your college.”
“He went to Northwestern?”
“Only because you went there.”
“Crystal, you filled him up with silly stories about me.”
“Sure. A mother who doesn’t encourage respect for the father in her son loses the son. Also loses the father. Some things never change. I told him stories about how many times and in how many ways you dodged picking up that Bronze Star. He pestered me for years trying to figure out how he could pick up your Bronze Star for you, get ahold of it. He probably will figure it out yet.”
Fletch asked, “Whose name is on his birth certificate?”
“Yours.”
“Oh, my.” Fletch wondered what would be the next thing he would eat, and when.
“That’s right.”
“His name is John Fletcher Faoni?”
“Yes.”
“Who’s John?”
“You wanted more of Irwin Maurice maybe?”
“No.”
“There was no John. Don’t be funny.”
“Your office says John Fletcher Faoni is spending the summer in Greece.”
